The snipping tool is a great feature in Windows that unfortunately few people know about. It lets you “snip” portions of your screen and save them as pictures. While you may not immediately see the usefulness of this tool, let me give you one example. Suppose you are frustrated with an error message that pops up on your screen and you would like to get your building tech to fix the problem. The next time the error occurs, you “snip” the message and paste it into an email. Now the tech can clearly “see” the problem you are having.

Once you try the snipping tool, you will find many uses for this simple and powerful tool. I love it and use it almost daily to help clarify explanations in email or to enhance my documents. The tool allows you to capture any portion of your screen and then add quick annotations to the image. So when a picture is worth a 1,000 words, use this tool and save yourself all that typing.

Use Snipping Tool to capture screen shots

You can use the Snipping Tool to capture a screen shot, or snip, of any object on your screen, and then annotate, save, or share the image.

You can capture any of the following types of snips:

Free-form Snip. Draw a free-form shape around an object.

Rectangular Snip. Drag the cursor around an object to form a rectangle.

Window Snip. Select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, that you want to capture.

Full-screen Snip. Capture the entire screen.

After you capture a snip, it’s automatically copied to the Clipboard and the mark-up window. From the mark-up window, you can annotate, save, or share the snip. The following procedures explain how to use Snipping Tool. (NOTE: for quick “snips” you don’t need to save the file, just paste (ctrl+v) into your email or doc)

Introduction: Students will create a digital opinion piece about a book they recently read. Using an assortment of digital tools such as text, shapes, lines, a stamp library, and voice recordings, they will create a two slide movie which will be published on the classroom website.

Students will use an iPad app called My Story Book Creator. This app is available in both free and paid versions, with the primary difference between them being the number of stamps included in the library. This lesson requires one iPad per student.

Teacher will download the movie from each iPad when the student is finished and then publish them on classroom website.

Note:

For teachers: Provide each teacher with a grade level appropriate picture book that they can use as the basis for the two classroom activities.

For Students: Students will choose a book from their book bins.

LESSON 1: Supporting opinion writing with digital tools

Intended Learning:

Students will express an opinion and provide support for their reasoning using a combination of digital tools.

This lesson can be completed in four 15-20 minute sessions.

Model and Independent Practice

Slide 1

Slide 2

Review projects as a class or independently

Guiding Question: How can we use a combination of digital tools to express an opinion?”

Model:

A teacher created sample will be shown to the class. The sample should be viewed from a link on the classroom website and not directly from the iPad. Provide students with an overview of the project, highlighting the required components on each slide.

Present the My Story Book Creator app to the class. Briefly demonstrate how to access the app and navigation features. Identify icons for the required components (voice, text, stamp library, etc.) but do not explain the steps involved in using the app.

Independent Practice:

Provide students with an opportunity to explore and get familiar with the My Story Book CreatorSchool Edition app. Students should be encouraged to ask “how to” questions to their peers, and not just the teacher. Teacher should support students, but not provide specific instructions unless another student is not available to answer the question, or unless the student is reaching a frustration point.

Activity:

Each slide in the story should contain a combination of the following elements :

Text

Use of stamp library

Drawings with shape tools

Voice recording

Slide 1: Draw a new cover for your book. Include the title of the book. Using the voice recording tool, state your opinion about why the author chose that title. Support your opinion with a reason and end your piece with a wrap up sentence.

Slide 2: Draw a picture of one of the characters in your book. Explain how you feel about that character using the voice recording tool. Be sure to include why you feel that way. Use the drawing tools and stamp library to highlight and clarify key details. End your piece with a wrap up sentence.

Curriculum / Standards

Grade 1 Strand: Reading Literature Category: Key Ideas and Details

Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

Grade 1 Strand: Writing Category: Text Types and Purposes

Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.

This easy to use voice recorder lets students record audio from Chromebooks or their browser on Windows or MAC computers. Recordings can be saved to Google drive so students can use the audio file in their Google Docs or Sides. The site has several other tools available to clip audio files and convert formats as well.